


Those who wait

by rillaelilz



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Gen, I'd like to apologise in advance, Too many feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 21:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3333299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillaelilz/pseuds/rillaelilz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those who wait

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not sure what this is. I just thought... maybe I could just leave it here. That's all.

She stays.

Not because she wants to - she would have given her right arm to go with them.  
  
( _But they won’t let her_.)  
  
But a home is not a home if there’s nobody waiting for you to come back. Father always said that a fire needs to be guarded, unless you want it to dwindle and die.

So Dís stays.

And in the meantime, she does what she always did - she goes about her day the way she did before, the way she’s had to learn many times now - how to stand up again when a piece of you was torn off your very soul, how to regain your balance when the weight of loss sits heavy on your heart and makes you think you’ll topple over the second you try and touch your feet to the floor.

The floor.

She spends hours scrubbing each and every wooden board, before she remembers that she never really wanted those stains gone. Nor the scrapes Fíli’s first carving knife left by the window, or the slight dip Kíli's old stool caused by the kitchen table to be even more visible once the dirt is out of the way.

But it’s too late to worry about that, so she moves on, and on and on and on until she’s just  _moving_ ,  _barely_  moving, just as restless as her heart, just as tired as her hands.

She hurries to the market,  _before all the good things are taken_ , as she’s done countless other times.

She makes her own bread once every few days - a single loaf had never lasted so long before.

She dusts her children’s room, tidying her own messes up when she clumsily spills

( _tears_ )

ink on their desk, ruffling the untouched sheets and outlining the oldest quills with a gentle fingertip. She keeps their window open for as long as the weather allows it, ignoring the chill of the night and the heat seeping in with the summer sun - until she notices their scent taking flight with the soft breeze and shuts that window for good.

 

She works. She prays. She tries not to think. She tries  _hard_ , really.

It’s just hard to ignore the constant whirring in her mind that keeps her awake at night - the nagging thriving in this accursed silence, rumbling in her ears like the market’s hubble-bubble.

Sometimes she manages to get some sleep. Other times, she ends up wandering towards the kitchen like a ghost, sitting with hot milk cooling in a mug - Fíli would have added a generous scoop of honey for her, she remembers, letting her forehead sink deeper in her hands.

There’s that one time, though - her fingers seem to still know how to roll a pie crust after all, or that’s what she’s led to believe when the sun peeks in through the windowpane and she finds herself with Kíli's favourite dessert lying on its lonesome on the counter, nice and warm and _doomed_ , just like her.

But pies deserve love, Dís tells herself with a small, tired smile.

Pies deserve cheer and eager hands and a glass of fresh milk. Pies deserve to crumble on little chins and laps, if they can’t sprinkle her son’s stubble with flaky bits or smear her eldest’s moustache with jam.

That’s why that pie finds its way in another kitchen, that same morning.

 

As silly and predictable as it sounds, the hardest part is not the pie-baking.

It’s not washing clothes and realising that they’ll stay clean and untouched until she decides to wash them again.

It’s the ache in her chest. The yearning for faces that she could _not_ see again, the voices still ringing in her ears every single day since the moment she blinks her eyes open, right until she closes them again to try and steal a handful of hours to  _rest_.

It’s the lingering memories surrounding her, enveloping every little thing - the smallest furnishings, the half-broken pots, the tear in the curtain that she hasn’t yet mended,  _everything_.

It’s the helplessness. The  _not-knowing_  side of her waiting.

The one she can’t stand, the one she can’t fight.

For the longest time, she hopes for a letter - nothing fancy, a mere scrap of paper wih a line scribbled on it. 

_We’re fine._

_It’s okay._

_We’ll be back._

That would do. Not that she would believe it, any of it, but  _it would do_.

So Dís hopes. And waits. She waits until autumn gives way to winter, and she waits still as primroses bloom and trees are dressed in green again.

She waits with the coldest winter storming in the hollow of her breast, dreading every word that reaches her of the great battle that had been raging far, far over the Misty Mountains when the first snow fell on Erebor, until somebody knocks on her door.

 

She cries.

She could scream, she could collapse on the cleanest floor in the whole of Ered-Luin, but she cries instead - hot, fat tears rolling down her cheeks as Dís traces the runes etched on the tiny stone with numb fingers, her thumb running back and forth over the most selfish but also the most selfless prayer of them all.

_Return to me._

That’s all she’d asked. That is all she ever wanted.

And now  _this_ , this cannot be happening.

Not wih Kíli's hands so cold and real, cradling her face ever so softly. Not with Fíli’s trembling fingers gently catching hold of her forearm to steady her.

"See, mother," her younger son says as she clutches the small runestone, holding onto it as if they could all slip out of her grasp once more. " _It worked._ ”


End file.
